Flesh of My Flesh

My first impression of Suitable Flesh (2023, directed by Joe Lynch) during its first act was that it didn't feel like a horror movie at all. It felt like one of those direct to video "erotic thrillers" of the late 1980s/early 1990s. Do you know the ones? They often starred former centerfold Shannon Tweed (who in her defense was a pretty good actress in a limited range) or Andrew Stevens. Suitable Flesh has the same shot on video look to it and the same baffling erotic impulses. I mean, sure. The film starts with an autopsy about to begin, and a psychiatrist visiting her friend and colleague after that colleague has been locked in a padded cell. And this all happens at "Miskatonic Medical School." But once that mental patient begins her story, you can queue up the candles for a night of soft-core. Or maybe not. Because this film doesn't get very naked, even if it does include oral pleasures. And once the film gets to the horror parts of the program, it goes at it full bore. It goes so over the top that I found myself giggling at two of its more outre` set-pieces. The second impression I had in its early going was that this was a film with a serious case of gender. The source material is Lovecraft's "The Thing on the Doorstep" which has as protagonists Lovecraft's usual neurasthenic male academics. This film gender swaps the leads and then mixes the novelty of female sexuality into the story's body-hopping shenanigans. Old Howard would run screaming from this, I'm sure.

The plot is related by Dr. Elizabeth Derby, a therapist in private practice, to her friend, Dr. Daniella Upton, who is a psychiatrist at Miskatonic Medical Center. Derby has been brought in because she's showing signs of paranoid schizophrenia and because there's a dead body involved. According to her, it all began when a young man named Asa Waite came to her office complaining that his father, Ephraim, was switching bodies with him and that if it continued, the switch would become permanent. In the middle of his story, Asa receives a phone call from his father, then has what appears to be a seizure, after which, his personality is much changed. Asa comes on to Derby, but she brushes him off and ushers him out of her office. Later that night, she imagines having sex with Asa while having sex with her husband, Edward. When Edward is asleep afterward, she goes to Asa's address and is confronted by his father, who is ill. He seems to be hanging on to life out of spite. Ephraim has an old book with strange drawings and unfamiliar letters in it, and when Elizabeth notices it, he threatens her with a knife. She leaves. The following evening, she's summoned to Asa's house again, where Ephraim appears to be dying. When she tries to administer his pills, Asa tries to prevent her. He claims that they must destroy Ephraim's body before he can invoke the spell that will transfer his mind into Asa's body a third and final time. But they are too late. Ephraim speaks the words, and Asa has another seizure, after which he is again much different. He seduces Elizabeth, and speaks his father's incantation into her ear while they are in the middle of intercourse, briefly transferring her out of her body and into his. Ephraim, however, isn't dead yet, and claims to be Asa in his father's body. Asa--or Ephraim in Asa's body--murders his father and cuts off his head. Unfortunately for Elizabeth, whatever is inside of Asa now covets her body. Things get messy from there...

This is a loving forgery of the films Barbara Crampton made with Stuart Gordon in the 1980s. It's more From Beyond than Re-Animator, but has elements of both of them. Crampton, who stars as Dr. Upton and who produced the film, has gotten as much of the band back together as she could manage for this film and dedicates the whole thing to Gordon's loving memory. The screenplay is by Dennis Paoli. Brian Yuzna is among the executive producers. The film lacks only Jeffrey Combs, perhaps as old Ephraim Waite; the part is played by Bruce Davison. Crampton herself is a secondary heroine as Dr. Upton. Her career renaissance continues apace and this might be the best film she's made since You're Next. If the whole thing can't match Gordon at his own game, there's no shame in that. He was a singular talent. The end result is still pretty good, and manages the not inconsiderable feat of capturing the spirit of Lovecraft even when the letter of the story is drastically different. This was one of Gordon's main gifts.

The film's heavy lifting is done by Heather Graham as Elizabeth Derby (the character in the story is "Edward Derby," a name given to her husband). The film requires her to assume multiple personalities over the course of the film and she mostly convinces the audience that those personalities are the body swapped characters played by the other actors. I imagine that there was some workshopping among the four principle actors where they decided on specific character cues that would unify their performances, though the filmmakers have used props for this, too. In truth, I wouldn't have thought Heather Graham a capable enough actor to pull this off, but she surprised me in this film. You pretty much always know who is in charge behind her eyes, which is a neat trick. The other actors are similarly able to convey who's driving--Bruce Davison is an underrated actor while Judah Lewis and Barbara Crampton are both genre vets who know what the material demands of them. None of the other actors--except maybe for Crampton--shoulders the burden of the film like Graham does, though. I should probably reevaluate my opinion of her abilities.

The body swapping shenanigans here are extrapolated into gender-swapping shenanigans by casting women in the two main roles while leaving Ephraim the way you find him in Lovecraft. As a result, you get a certain amount of lascivious interest in female sexuality from a male perspective here. When Ephraim first jumps into Elizabeth, it's during sex and he treats it as a novel experience. The second time, he pauses to feel her up before having sex with her husband. At some point he tells Upton that he "thinks" he was born male, but having now experienced sex as a woman, he's no longer sure. There's a strong thread of transgender wish fulfillment in this movie and the body swapping trope is common in transgender fan fiction. But whatever wish fulfillment might be present here, there's an abject horror of identity death in this film that comes along with it. And an even larger horror of being "trapped in the wrong body." For a film that isn't really interested in transgender themes, it gets tangled up in them in spite of itself. This is a trans movie without any trans people, unless one takes Ephraim at his word. I don't know whether to credit the film for not finding horror in transness specifically--it's main horror is the death of identity--or to shrug it off because the filmmakers maybe didn't notice what they were doing. I can't imagine such a thing in 2023, but you never know with cis people.

If you're going to be trying to do a Stuart Gordon horror movie, there's a certain obligation to provide the audience with one or two scenes of outrageous violence. Gordon was in the one-upmanship business, and you had better be ready to play if you come near his cinema. In this, Suitable Flesh doesn't disappoint. The murder of Asa when he's in Ephraim's body is as stomach-turning as anyone could want, and it's placed relatively early in the film. The film then does that scene one better when Elizabeth must defend herself against Ephraim in Asa's body, and winds up running him over repeatedly with her car. I won't give it away, but the shot in which this is done is really clever. If none of the gags in this film are the equal of Dr. Hill peeling a skull like an orange in Re-Animator while Herbert West snaps his pencils, well, some senses of grotesque humor are unique.

Director Joe Lynch isn't totally a slave to Stuart Gordon or Charles Band for his effects. He knows how to place the camera, and he knows when to move it a little or a lot. When the plot of the film flies off the handle, so too does the camera. When the film reaches its nasty ending, he lets the world spin off its axis both metaphorically and literally. This is a radical horror movie in the end, in which the audience is not assured that all is right with the world. The form of the film sees no reason to even suggest such a thing.

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Welcome to this year's October Horror Movie Challenge. I'm participating in my friend, Aaron Christensen's annual fundraiser during this year's challenge. Aaron has chosen the Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project as this year's recipient for our community's largess, so if you've got a few bucks lying around, here's a donation link for the donor drive. You know what to do.

This is posting on Halloween, and I haven't kept up with blogging the challenge. These numbers are out of date. I'll finish the challenge at 31 films late tonight, but I don't know how the balance will shake out of new to me films. We'll see how it goes. I'll be posting reviews through the next month, in any event...

My current progress:
New to me films: 4
Total films: 6

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